Days Spent With The Seven
by GleeGeneration23
Summary: Seven Moments John spent with his children pre the start of the show-lots of John and his children bonding moments.


**Hi I don't know where this came from but here it is.**

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**Disclaimer-Nothing is mine**

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Days Spent With The Seven

Seven Moments John spent with his children pre the start of the show-lots of John and his children bonding moments.

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John Samuel Walton JR.

Age Two

John comes home from the war with a hollow ache, he comes home with part of him utterly crushed because Ben is dead. But he comes home with a ring of excitement as he realises that he now finally gets to spend time with his boys.

Back in the harshest times of the war John had fallen to sleep with the pictures of his two boys pressed close to him. He would trace the faeces of John and Jason and whisper every night that Daddy loved the pair of them and no matter what happened as if saying it to the photo would make up for never saying it to their faces.

So when he comes home, he sweeps Livy into a hug and then drops her, dropping to his knees and watching as his two sons aged two and eighteen months wake from their sleep to watch him with baleful eyes and his face lights up when some recognition flickers on John's face.

John tries to bond with the both of them on the days he has home, he takes John to the lake and he watches as the little boy toddles around splashing in the hot springs. He takes him on an old mule his Pa keeps and John loves it clapping his hands as they climb to the mountain.

"Daddy" John says on day and John looks up from where he has been sat helping John make mud houses for his imaginary friends-Liv will be furious when she sees the both of them covered in mud but John wouldn't want to trade his son's smile for the world and he wants nothing more to do than keep it on no matter what.

"My name is John-Boy" he says looking up his expression as serious as a two year old can get and John pauses before nodding as John-Boy now called climbs into his lap and cuddles against his chest covering his shirt In mud. "I'm glad your home" he mutters spelling over the words in concentration and John feels his heart swell.

"I'm glad I'm home to son" he says patting John-Boys blonde hair and leaning back against the tree.

And for a long time father and son stayed like that lying against a tree both content in the knowledge that they have each other.

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Jason James Walton.

Age Four

Jason is four when he toddles off into the woods, Livy is busy with the new baby and John Boy is now in school and loving every minute of learning to write. Jason has a couple of years to go before he reaches that milestone and it's clear that he loves every second of being the eldest in the house.

However Jason isn't an impulsive child, he doesn't do the disappearing act that John knows Ben used to do when they were children so to hear his wife scream that their middle son is missing completely throws him

And then he felt slightly sick, he tampered down the reaction to prevent Olivia from seeing the full blown panic that is roaring in his stomach, because this place may be relatively safe in terms of strangers but in terms of nature it is worrying how much he hasn't told his son.

And how much danger he might have got into.

Thankfully Jason leaves a pretty good trail without even intending two, his bare little footprints leaving marks even without trying to and he delves into the grass to what looks like the cave Ben and he had found when they were kids.

He knows its Jason by the loud incessant banging.

It is Jason and John allows himself a moment where he thanks whatever's up there that his cruel world that took his brother hasn't took his son.

"Jason" he whispers and Jason pauses his little face frozen into a frown "Shh Daddy" he whispers his face a picture of concentration "I need to get this right"

John feels like dragging Jason home and telling him that he needs to go home and convince his mother that he's alright but the last hour is catching up with them and it's dizzying and John just sits down and lets Jason bang a stick against the rock of the cave.

It's better than the alternative anyway.

And who knows maybe Jason will be musical.

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Mary-Ellen Olivia Walton.

Age Six

When Mary-Ellen is six she gets into a fight. That doesn't surprise John as he's come to realise that his eldest daughter is perhaps one of the most volatile and hot headed Walton he has ever seen.

And with his family that really is saying something.

She trapes home with a hyper John-Boy and Jason her pretty little face blackened with a black eye and a split lip. John's first reaction is anger because whether or not someone intended it or not or is even a child, someone has put his hands on his child.

And no matter what that is most certainly not fine with John.

He wants blood.

Mary-Ellen seems fine with it and it baffles John to the point where it keeps him up at night. And it doesn't end there, Mary-Ellen has grown up with two older brothers and one in the cradle and maybe another one on the way and there is a desperation (that John accepts) that she wants and needs to be included in whatever is happening around her.

But still she is his little girl.

However it isn't until a woman whose name he can only vaguely remember slams into his house dragging her son who looks worse than his daughter ever could that John realises the fullest extent of what happened that day.

"He wanted to kiss me" she says later that night scrunching her face up into a disgusted expression "I hit him, I don't want a boy to kiss me Daddy-there yucky"

That's John's little girl.

He laughs threw the night with nothing short of glee even as Livy tells him his daughter will have to be punished.

The next morning he realises that if his daughter is gonna beat up boys twice her size then she better know what she's doing, and that morning under both his mother and his wife's rather disapproving eye he carefully teaches his six year old daughter to box.

And really he tells a fuming Liv that night. He's really only encouraging her to defend herself.

And that G.W Haynes better keep his hands to himself.

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Benjamin Henry Walton

Age Three-

Ben Is a world apart from his brothers, a dreamer and a musician, Ben is an adventurer. If John could pick anyone out of his five children who he thinks will see the world he picks Ben.

John tries not to have favourites, he thinks it's sinful because he loves all his children and even with a gun to his head he could never choose between them but he feels a special connection with Ben he doesn't feel with the others.

Maybe it's because Ben reminds him of his brother, or maybe it's because he is the one that looks to John like he's the centre of his little universe, he's selfish but he loves the idea of a child worshiping him like he's a God.

Yeah, he really doesn't know what to say to that thought.

"Daddy" Ben says watching him, his head coming up to the top of the workshop table, "Can I help?"

John chuckles to himself "No son I don't think your old enough yet" Ben looks utterly heartbroken so John relents, "I can give you a piece of wood and you can sand it down if you promise to be quiet and careful and not touch anything"

Ben nods looking thrilled and he sits and watching John his wood in his hand his little face screwed up in concentration and his tongue pointing outwards.

John laughs to himself turning back to his work. Sometimes his son really is too precious for words.

Ben sands the paper down in less than an hour and he watches as his siblings play with each other and he sits to the side watching his father work with wide eyes committing everything he does to memory.

"I wanna be like you when I grow up" he chirps that night at bedtime and John smiles

"When you grow up you can be whatever you want" he says pressing a kiss into Ben's hair the exact colour of his uncles.

And it's a promise he intends to keep.

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Erin Ester Walton

Age Five-

Erin has been Olivia's daughter since the day she's been born much like the way Mary-Ellen has been John's. She loves her mother and clearly idolises her and everything she does.

He doesn't begrudge Olivia a stronger bond with Erin than she does whatever he has with Ben and he sits and watches over the edge of his newspaper as Erin follows her mother around egger to assist in any way she can.

So when Erin staggers into their bedroom lugging a huge book of fairy tales from John-Boy John is a little more than surprised when she carries the book to him and demands she reads to him.

John sits and reads through at least three stories and he realises that each one of them ends the same way. With the happy ending. John has a feeling that in the next year a happy ending won't be happening, he wonders if the world is changing and if Erin has managed to pick up on the tensions happening outside Europe and in America.

"Daddy" she says looking up at him her eyes wide and blue "Do you think that I will get my happy ending?"

It's such a strange question for a child to ask that he wants nothing more to hug his daughter and protect her from the world.

"Of course you can dear" he says pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "I promise you one day a prince that I approve of will come and sweep you away and then you can get your happy ending"

Erin nods hugging herself to the pillow and falling asleep against his chest and John smiles to himself.

He loves his children.

He really loves his children.

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James Robert Walton

Age Seven-

John hates the idea that he takes another seven years to bond with his son. The pain and the ache of Joe's death is still resulting around the two of them and while they try to act like nothing has happened whenever they are around the children but they are cold around each other and they are unable to touch each other.

Livy can't look Jim-Bob in the face for three years and even then he struggles himself to bond with his son. It's his father that practically raises James in the early years and looking back on it, it makes the both of them shudder and therefore they don't talk about it.

They don't even mention the dead baby or the grave they never take the children to, and John struggles to make sure that Jim-Bob makes himself accepted into his family with his parents.

So John takes him fishing and hiking and shows him the mountain and explains the whole woodwork of the family and teaches him about animals and the whole, farm work that he does.

And Jim-Bob loves him for it, he loves everything that John shows him and takes care and time with the animals that John shows him how to look after.

But that doesn't change that at the end of the day Jim-Bob goes straight to his father and tell him everything, hanging on his every word and making sure that everything John tells him is confirmed by Zeb.

And god doesn't that hurt because that is living proof that John has lost the battle for his son's attention and is therefore on his own.

And when he thinks about it, thinks long and hard In the barn about his life choices with the jar of recipe that he keeps quiet from his wife and mother, out of all of the poor life choices he's made the decision to not cement himself in his youngest son's life is perhaps one of the most worst he has ever done.

And nothing, nothing cerements it's more than when Jim-Bob is in the hospital and John doesn't know what to do with himself.

He doesn't know how to comfort his own son.

And that is the worst mistake he has ever made.

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Elizabeth Tyler Walton

Age One-

Elizabeth is the youngest and the last of the Walton children. And thank god for that.

She's the quiet one the cute little button that makes his day with her smile and freckles and she looks adorably confused and naïve and sweet.

It doesn't mean she doesn't give John his fair share of heart attacks because she does- and the example is clear when she comes down with a twenty four hour fever that results with John Boy in the barn and Livy nearly passes out with the stress and the exhaustion and what is happening.

So John is left where she left him, sat on the bed ringing a damp towel onto his little girl's forehead and trying his best not to fall asleep.

But then in the middle of the night Elizabeth flicks her tiny little hand at him and smiles in her sleep.

It's not a lot but it's enough to keep him going, because these are his children. These are the reason he gets up in the morning and the reason he smiles, and John will be damned if he doesn't get the change to give each and every one of them exactly what they want in life.

Because John Walton's children deserve everything.

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